


Dystopia Is for Lovers

by blue_fjords



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-04
Updated: 2012-02-04
Packaged: 2017-10-30 13:52:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/332435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_fjords/pseuds/blue_fjords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ben Braeden has just moved to California to live with his scientist dad and his schoolteacher uncle after the death of his mother.  Things begin to look up for him and his family when he meets the famous sci-fi author, Castiel Novak.  (Told in alternating POVs by Ben, Cas, Sam and Dean.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dystopia Is for Lovers

+++ **BEN** +++

It all started when Uncle Sam got involved in this program to make reading look cool to middle schoolers. Well, no, I suppose it started before then, when I moved out to the LA area to live with my dad, and he gave me a copy of _Stonehenge Apocalypse_ by Castiel Novak because he liked it, and I like everything my dad likes. But I guess it started even before all of that, when my mom died, but I don't like to talk about that so I'm not gonna. Besides, this is a story about the four of _us_ , me, my dad, Uncle Sam and Cas, and that story started for reals when Uncle Sam tried to impress the art teacher by launching this program. And the rest, as they say, is history.

I moved to California in July, which is the worst time to move to California. Well, maybe August is worse. It was really hot, and there were fires, and I was real sad on account of my mom. My uncle had pulled some strings so that I would be in his homeroom when school (blech) started. I would have been starting Dwight Eisenhower Middle School back home (they called it that because President Eisenhower once gave a speech in our town, got sick, and had to stay in Myra Littleton's front parlor an extra day while he hacked up half a lung), but instead I would be starting sixth grade at Harvey Milk Middle School. Harvey Milk was played by Sean Penn in a movie. I don't know anyone cool who's played Dwight Eisenhower. Though my dad says Sean Penn is pretentious, not cool. I had to wiki 'pretentious.' 

Anyhow, it was nice and all of Uncle Sam to do that, but at the time I didn't know him either, so any teacher would be just like any other. But I guess he was planning ahead.

I'd been in California two weeks when my dad gave me a copy of _Stonehenge Apocalypse_. This is what's cool about _Stonehenge Apocalypse_ : first, the name – there's an apocalypse right in the title; second, it's not cheesy; third, the science is cool, my dad says so, and he would know; and fourth, it's dystopian, but it's not like _everyone_ dies. Yeah, I had to wiki 'dystopian,' too. One more cool thing about _Stonehenge Apocalypse_ : it's my dad's favorite book.

I was reading it for the third time when Uncle Sam told me about his program. You could tell he was real excited about it. Uncle Sam's weird, because he's really tall and strong and girls like him, but he's a dweeb. My dad says so, and I totally agree. Uncle Sam flails when the grocery store stocks pretzel M&M's, and he argues at the TV during "Judge Judy." I never knew any men who watched "Judge Judy" before. My dad says Uncle Sam used to want to be a lawyer, then he listened to Whitney Houston and got it in his head that the children are our future, so he switched.

Uncle Sam's program went like this: each sixth grader reads a book, and then sends a letter to the author. The letter was supposed to be about what you liked about the book, any questions you had, that sort of thing. Then all of the sixth graders would vote on their favorite author, and that author would be invited to Harvey Milk's Book Fair. Uncle Sam had a few authors in mind who would actually even come.

It didn't sound all that exciting to me, until I realized I could write to Castiel Novak, even though _Stonehenge Apocalypse_ is a book for adults. But I didn't want to just _write_ to the great Castiel Novak. I wanted to meet him.

I thought that part would be really hard to do, but it wasn't. See, Castiel Novak has a literary agent, just like Tom Brady has a sports agent, and all I had to do was call the publishing company (Comatose Manuscripts) and ask the lady there (she sounded twelve, and I was trying not to sound eleven) who represented the great writer, Castiel Novak. And she told me! Chuck Shurley, and he had an office in Venice Beach. So _then_ I called him. Only he didn't answer. For like, three days. That must be a California thing, the whole not answering thing. So I got Uncle Sam to drive me there.

He was psyched to do it, too. He wanted some manly bonding time, and to ask me about my feelings, but my dad had warned me. He said I didn't have to talk about my mom to anyone, only to him if he was worried about me. I just got Uncle Sam to talk about the history of the Missions Trail instead, and that took half an hour and we were there!

Chuck Shurley's office was on the second floor of a peep show! Uncle Sam turned bright red and hustled me up the stairs as fast as we could go, which was pretty fast, considering he has legs longer than most people are tall. Anyhow, Mr. Shurley was asleep at his desk when we got there. His office reeked. Uncle Sam went over to the desk to see if the dude would wake up while I looked around. I'm an excellent looker-arounder; my mom always used to ask me to find stuff for her. But whatever, I looked all around the office and found his mail. 

And right on top was a letter with a return address from Castiel Novak. And guess what? Castiel Novak lived in Pasadena. I could get there on the bus all by myself.

Mr. Shurley woke up then, and he seemed a bit confused and drooly, so we left, but not before I took the empty envelope with me. I was going to meet the great Castiel Novak face-to-face!

*** **CASTIEL** ***

_"Despite a title that promises good cheesy fun reminiscent of a science fiction double feature from your childhood, Castiel Novak's_ Stonehenge Apocalypse _is a dreary slog through a dystopian future. The heroes, if they can be called that, are so shaded with gray it is impossible to feel for their predicament, and they talk overmuch. Where are the fireworks? Where is the pizzazz?"_

Believe it or not, but that was one of my better reviews, from Bob Zachariah of _The Prophet_. He's an old family friend, so he reviews all my books. He's also hopelessly pedantic and an assbutt. He did have one point about the title, however. My agent chose it, and I should know better than to allow Chuck Shurley to put pen to paper.

Zachariah didn't understand my books; that was abundantly obvious. "Dystopian" he labeled them, as if there could be any alternative for a book about the future. I have been watching this world for a long time now. This is the way we are headed. There's no turning aside, all roads lead to the same destination. My books are actually optimistic! The heroes don't give up, no matter how they are beaten. They cling stubbornly to life. How is that not optimistic?

I'm working on a new book now, a sequel to _Stonehenge Apocalypse_. I'd like to name this one myself, though no title has occurred to me as of yet. I'm sure it will also be lacking in "pizzazz."

I like to completely shut out all distractions when I'm writing. I write everything longhand and have my typist, Becky Rosen, enter it all into a computer. Then I double-check her typing as she can sometimes get confused by my handwriting and include misleading sentences.

I was working on this new book the morning I met Ben Braeden. I was deep into a fascinating description of the method the younger of my two heroes was using to create an edible paste from nuts when there was a knock at my front door, followed by the ringing of the bell. When my parents lived in the house, they employed housekeepers and cooks, but now that it's just me, I look after myself. I considered just not answering the door, but whoever was out there (that would be Ben) was quite persistent.

A child blinked up at me when I opened the door. He was sweaty, and a bit dirty, and smelled like a sugary soft drink. He was probably selling something -- something I wouldn't want to buy. I decided to tell him, kindly, to go away, but then he opened his mouth and spoke.

"Are you Mr. Castiel Novak, the awesome writer of _Stonehenge Apocalypse_ , _One Thousand Deaths in a Day_ and _Little Girl Possessed_?"

I was a bit taken aback by this breathless recitation of my greatest works, but as I am indeed that Castiel Novak, I answered in the affirmative.

"My name's Ben Braeden," said Ben. "And you're my favorite author. And my dad's. We think you're awesome."

"It is very kind of you to come here and tell me, Ben," I answered.

"Cool," said Ben.

I was a bit at a loss at this point. I didn't know much about children, and I couldn't place his age. My books were not written for children, but if he had read them and liked them, perhaps he was simply suffering from a disease that gave him the appearance of a child. There were such diseases in the world. I once saw a program – I realized abruptly that the Ben-Manchild had said something further, and I had missed it.

"No," I hazarded to guess. I knew immediately it was the wrong thing to say, as his cherubic little face fell.

"Oh. I mean, I understand, you're probably very busy…" His voice trailed off as he scuffed his feet on the front stoop. I frowned and tried to guess what he must have asked.

"I am currently writing the sequel to _Stonehenge Apocalypse_ ," I began, and his eyes lit up.

"Oh my God, that's awesome!" he exclaimed. "I mean, that's really cool. I shouldn't interrupt you."

"You have already interrupted me. I doubt I will get that train of thought back this morning." He practically wilted at that, and I felt like a bit of an assbutt myself for telling him what was only the truth. "Perhaps you would like to help me get it back, though?" I asked, opening the door wider and inviting him inside.

He came right in and looked around. The foyer was rather impressive, I'd have to agree. Ours was one of the oldest houses in Pasadena. We had a circular marble staircase and paintings from the turn of the last century up on the walls. I'd maintained the house in the exact manner my parents would have wanted. It was foolish, I suppose, as they won't ever be back to check on my progress. There was no coming back from death.

I led Ben to my study, and he trailed his fingers over the mahogany desk where I did all my writing. I would never buy a mahogany desk today, due to the overharvesting of mahogany, but that desk had been in my family for many decades. I might as well make use of it.

There followed one of the most pleasant mornings of my recent memory. Ben, it turned out, was going into the sixth grade at Harvey Milk Middle School (I remembered when it was called George Wallace Middle School) and he was doing a project on his favorite author. That would be me. I answered his questions as succinctly and forthrightly as I could. Before we knew it, three hours had passed and Ben's shorts began to make a noise.

"Shit, is it noon?!" Ben vociferated, pulling out a fancy new cellular phone. "I'm supposed to be at the house to go over to Dad's work with Uncle Sam!" 

He looked quite distressed.

"Where do you live, Ben?" I asked. He told me a neighborhood that would take half an hour to reach by car, without traffic. "That is half an hour away," I informed him.

"I'm dead!" he moaned. "Hey, how far away is Cal Tech from here?"

"That would be about ten minutes by motor vehicle," I answered. 

"Do you want to go to lunch with us? We could just meet Uncle Sam right at the campus."

I blinked at him. There were many reasons why I should not have gone to lunch with the Winchester family on that day. I did not have a car, for one thing. I didn't know the two adults and I didn't like meeting strangers, for another. I wasn't particularly hungry. I had to work on my book. But I said yes anyhow because I could not recall the last time anyone had invited me to any spontaneous gathering.

~~~ **SAM** ~~~

About seventy sets of parents entrusted me with their eleven-year-olds every day. I am extremely trustworthy. Yet when it comes to my own nephew, it's like I forget that he's not mini-Dean.

Dean had been a dad, for all intents and purposes, since he was four. I look at Ben, and it's like I expect him to be the same way. That was the only explanation I could come up with for how I managed to lose him that morning. Dean left for the lab at Cal Tech, and I poked my head in Ben's room and asked him if he wanted to go into school with me to get some things up for the new year. He said nah, he'd hang out at home, and I said okay, see you at noon to go meet your dad (that still sounds weird to say) and then I'd left. How could I have left? I _know_ eleven-year-olds. You cannot leave them unsupervised. But I did.

And then he called me back, after I found out that he was _not_ home, to say he'd spent all morning with his idol. Of course, it was all my fault. And then he said he was going to take a cab over to Cal Tech with his new friend! Oh, hell, no!

"You stay put! I'll come pick you up. Don't you leave that house, you hear me?" Holy shit, I was sounding like my old man. John Winchester used to use his connections as a State Trooper to run background checks on all of our potential playmates growing up. Lord knows how Ash slipped under his radar.

"I won't, Uncle Sam," Ben said softly, and I felt like more of a loser. "Can Mr. Castiel Novak still come to lunch with us?"

If he had the social skills God gave a frog, Mr. Castiel Novak would bow out. But of course, if he'd had even the social skills God gave a spoon, he would never have invited an unaccompanied minor into his house in the first place.

"We'll see," I grunted into the phone. I kept him on the line with me for the entire length of the drive over there. Maybe that was a bit overprotective, but Ben was my nephew. Plus, Dean would never forgive me if I let anything bad happen to him.

Novak lived in an old mansion just off Pasadena's main drag. I knew for a fact that a few of the houses on his street had been featured in a recent article on Southern California living in _Architectural Digest_. They were gorgeous. Novak's house, on the other hand… It looked like he hadn't paid the gardener in about ten years. Everything was rather overgrown and wild. It would have been romantic-looking, if his lawn didn't clash so horribly with his neighbors' and if I hadn't been in such a foul mood.

Ben opened the door as I picked my way up the path. He gave me his best puppy dog impression. He must get that from Dean, as I certainly never do that to get my way. And then Novak joined him in the doorway.

He was not at all what I was expecting. The dude was young, just a few years older than Dean, I would guess, and he was wearing a suit. To write in, oddly enough. But the strangest thing about him was his eyes. They were the type of blue you could fall into and never climb out of again. Not that I was into dudes, but if I had been, I'd've been interested in this dude. Needless to say, I wasn't going to forbid him from going to lunch with us.

He walked a little too close behind me down the path to my car while Ben chattered away in the rear. At least he got Ben to talk, the poor kid had been rather closed-mouthed since Dean brought him home after Lisa's funeral.

"This is a fascinating car," Novak pronounced, stopping dead at the curb. I stood a little straighter. I love my car. Dean built it for me, and it is truly cutting edge and, well, fantastical.

"It's a prototype from my brother's lab at Cal Tech. He's an engineer there, working on sustainable fuel alternatives. Watch." I pushed a button on my keychain, and the passenger door opened up, just like a Delorean, hence why I called it "The Delorean." Ben scrambled into the back seat and Novak sat himself down in the passenger seat. "This car runs partly on solar energy from those panels you saw on the roof," I continued, getting into my seat and starting up the engine. It was very quiet, another bonus. "Dean had one once that ran on recycled bacon grease, like that episode of _The Simpsons_ , you know?"

Novak gave me a blank look. I guessed he didn't know.

"Anyhow, it exploded and left this disgusting film over everything, it was incredibly nasty." I laughed, and after a moment, Novak followed suit and gave a polite chuckle. I was starting to see how he could have just invited Ben into his house unsupervised that morning.

"And I suppose Ben's told you all about the reading program I'm doing for his school, huh?" I asked, changing tack. It was a good tactic, and kept both of them involved in the conversation for the length of the ride to the campus.

### **DEAN** ###

I was hungry. Sam and Ben were supposed to meet me at 1:00 outside my lab. I was working on an engine to run on a higher concentration of ethanol – good in theory, but not great in practice. I was trying to strengthen the engine parts to withstand the effects of alcohol and, across the lab, Bobby was experimenting with the fuel itself. Unsuccessfully, it sounded like from the steady stream of curses that reached me despite the blast shield between us.

Bobby Singer was my mentor and my boss, and an all-around awesome human being. Most people thought he was gruff and sour, maybe a little crazy, and yeah, he was all those things, but they didn't know him like I did. When I told Bobby about Lisa dying and me going to Indiana to bring back a son, he said I could take all the time I needed to get Ben and adjust to life as a dad, I'd always have a job here. He said he was proud of me; it was like an episode of fucking _Oprah_.

I first met Ben three years ago. Sam and I were driving cross-country, and we heard that this famous educator was going to be speaking at a town near Lisa's. (No, not really. That's just the story Sam begged me to tell people. _I_ was driving cross-country. Sam was hitching a ride to some convention for people who dress up in robes and shit and buy authentic daggers and fight battles by rolling dice or something. I don't know; I tune him out when he talks about that stuff.) 

At any rate, it was just a few miles from Cicero so I decided to look Lisa up again. Lisa was a one-night stand from nine years before that. She was fun and bendy and so damn easy-going. Basically she was the opposite of me. I showed up at her house and that's when I met Ben. She swore up and down that he was not my kid, even though we were so much alike. I stayed in touch when we made it out to California, and then a month ago I got a call from an Indiana State Trooper about a fatal accident. And I was on the next flight out.

On this day, though, my brother and my son were late for lunch and I was fucking starving. Bobby could hear my damn stomach growling, even over the noise he was making. He kept shooting me dirty looks, and I kept rolling my eyes at him. I finally called Ben.

"Where the hell are you, squirt? I'm wasting away over here."

"Dad! We're bringing a surprise guest! You'll never guess who!"

I hadn't heard him sound so upbeat in… ever. Must've been one hell of a guest.

"Is it Halle Berry?"

"No!"

"Lucy Liu? Cameron Diaz?"

"No!" He laughed outright. I was way off the mark, but I didn't care. It was great to hear him laugh. "Meet us at the Roadhouse; it's closer than going to the lab first."

"Oh, really? I bet I can make it in four minutes."

"We'll be there in three!" Ben shrieked into the phone. Okay then. Mickey Mouse. He was happy-inducing, right?

I shoved my phone in my pocket and took off for the Roadhouse. It's a bit of a dive bar, but the location was good (edge of campus) and the owner was Bobby's on-again, off-again girlfriend. They were on-again, which meant free fries. Possibly pie. 

I walked inside and saw Cas for the first time. My son was laughing at something he'd said. Ben's whole body shook when he laughed. Sam says I used to laugh like that, but I don't remember it. Anyhow, Ben was laughing, shaking the bench, and Cas was watching him with his head tilted slightly to the side, as if he was studying how to get that reaction again. _You and me both, buddy,_ I thought to myself, and then he turned to look at me.

Cas was… well, he was a grown man, and he'd been through some pretty bad shit (I had Googled him several years ago, after reading one of his books), but Cas maintained this air about him that was fucking pure. First time I saw him, and I wanted him to want me. I wanted him to think I was worth something. And I really, really wanted to fuck him. Despite the fact he was wearing a full suit on a warm California day.

And then he opened his mouth, and I was sure Sam could see my reaction plain as day. I wanted that voice to whisper dirty, filthy things in my ear as he jerked me off.

"You are Dean Winchester," he said, which, yeah, no shit. But he could have called me anything, and I would have given him the same shit-eating grin.

"Dad!" Ben bounced out of the booth, finally spotting me. "I want you to meet my new friend, Mr. Castiel Novak, the world-famous author."

Damn, I was so screwed.

We talked about his books, of course, as we ate our lunch with free fries and polished it off with free apple pie. Cas had a stilted way of talking, like he was saying it in his head first. I guess that's a writer thing. Or maybe it's just a Cas thing. Either way, he came out with some crazy non sequiturs over lunch, so the whole trial-run-in-his-head thing didn't really work that well. Ben and I kept exchanging goofy looks (at least Ben looked goofy) the whole time. We couldn't help it! Castiel Novak! In the flesh!

He asked about the bacon-grease engine ("Dude, it took Sam three weeks to get his hair back to that full, model-shine mop he's sporting," I told him.) and he said he'd once considered writing a book starring a truck, but had given up on it ("Hell, I'd read that!" I told him, and he said, "It would not have been good. I have a hard enough time understanding human beings. I'm afraid I would not be able to adequately express the motivation of a truck.") He was very forthright. No bullshit with Cas.

We were deep into a discussion on the presentation of dystopian societies in books versus film (even Sam was interested in this one, he was definitely more animated than when I talked about engines) when I realized it was already 3:00 and my lunch hour had gone on way longer than it should.

"Shit! I have to get back to the lab!" I gestured at Sam to pay the bill, which earned me a constipated cow expression, but I knew he'd do it. "Listen, Cas," the nickname just slipped right out; hell, I'd been calling him that in my head ever since I picked up _Little Girl Possessed_ seven years ago, "you should really come by the lab sometime. We've got some cars there, dude, they'd fit right into your books."

He smiled at me then, his eyes crinkling. It was, I could admit to myself, endearing.

"I would very much enjoy that, Dean," he said gravely.

~~~ **SAM** ~~~

My brother and his hormones bumbled off to work, leaving me with the bill and his exceedingly obvious crush. Typical. Although, honestly, 'Cas' was not a typical choice for Dean. For one thing, he was a dude, and I'd never actually seen him with a dude before, just heard from our dad that Dean swung both ways (most awkward conversation EVER). And for another, Dean had just talked to him for almost two hours, and not about sex or sexual euphemisms. Though you'd have to be a dead stick to not pick up on what he was feeling. I glanced at Ben, happily sucking down his milkshake and swinging his feet under the table. A dead stick or an eleven-year-old boy.

"Mr. Novak," he began, clunking his glass on the tabletop. "Tomorrow's Saturday."

Oh, God. He'd already started using Novak's non sequiturs.

"It will indeed be Saturday tomorrow," Novak replied. I looked over their heads to catch Ellen's eye for the bill. 

"Right. And my dad and I are going to go fishing! Like Sean and Dan do in _Stonehenge Apocalypse_. At a little pond near here." He paused for breath.

"Then it is possible you will catch a three-eyed fish due to the chemical dumping," Novak said, frowning. "Though that would also fit in with _Stonehenge Apocalypse_."

Ellen slapped the bill on the table (free fries, yay, and Dean's pie was free, too!) and I quickly grabbed it and followed her to the counter.

"Who's your brother's new friend?" she asked in a low voice. "Ben seems quite taken with him."

I glanced back at the booth. Ben was enthusiastically demonstrating reeling in a big fish and Novak was still frowning. Trying to imagine the third eye, I guessed.

"He's their favorite author. Sci-fi, dystopian future, that sort of thing."

Ellen smirked at me, and I knew exactly what she was thinking.

" _No_ , I don't read it."

"It's a perfectly legitimate genre, Sam," she said, and handed me my change, "and speaking of which, Jo told me she was hosting your club next week. Any snack requests, sweetheart?"

I could feel myself flushing a bit. Dammit. But, since she asked– 

"Hummus?" I asked hopefully. I knew Harry and Ed would be bringing the Cheetos and root beer. Hummus would even things out a bit.

"You got it. And Jo has already asked me to make myself scarce, so you can take your time."

"Thanks, Ellen." We were in a full-out battle with Ronald Reznick's group, and they had TWO wizards. Harry was our wizard, but he always tripped himself up; it annoyed Jo (warrior) to no end. Ed was the elf and I was the dwarf. We really needed more people, but who could I ask? Dean laughed himself silly whenever I went out to play and I hadn't actually admitted to my fellow teachers that I role-played a dwarf once a week. 

I turned back to the table just in time to hear Ben say that everything was settled and he and Dean would be at Novak's house by 5:00 the next morning. My eyebrows wanted to climb into my hair. _Castiel_ was invited on their sacred father-son bonding fishing trip? They never invited _me_! Granted, it was absurdly early and I would have said no, but still.

"Time to go home, Ben," I announced.

"We'll drop you off," Ben told Novak, and I rolled my eyes. Way to ask me first, kid. "That's okay, right, Uncle Sam?" Oh.

"Yeah, sure. On the way and all."

Novak gave me a smile as he slid out of the booth and put on his coat, which he really didn't need in this weather.

"Thank you for the lunch, Sam, and the rides in your Delorean. It is a highly unique and exciting vehicle."

"You can thank Dean tomorrow, as he treated for lunch and built the car."

Two spots of color appeared on Novak's cheeks. Never let it be said that I did nothing for my brother.

And never let it be said that Ben didn't, either. When I woke up the next morning and stumbled into the kitchen around 9:00, Ben was sitting at the breakfast bar eating a sugar-based cereal and reading the funny pages.

"Ben? Why aren't you fishing with Dean and Novak? You're not back already, right?" Had I imagined the whole thing? My hands fumbled for the coffee pot. Ben looked up at me, biting his lip.

"I thought – I thought maybe they'd like some time, just the two of them? I told Dad I had a stomach ache, but it was too early in the morning and late notice to cancel, so he should just take Mr. Castiel Novak." He fiddled with his spoon and stared at the back of the cereal box. "Do you think I did the right thing?"

I was speechless. Damn, had I really thought the kid hadn't picked up on the vibes from yesterday's lunch?

"Ben," I told him, and reached out to squeeze his shoulder. "Welcome to the sacred Winchester tradition of being a Wing Man." 

He smiled wide and I was forcibly reminded of Dean at fifteen, borrowing the car when he was too young to drive so I could have a ride to Tammy Johnson's birthday party.

"Thanks, Uncle Sam."

*** **CASTIEL** ***

I had never been fishing before. I researched it for one of my books, though, so I was fairly confident I would physically be able to do it. I was more nervous about being in the presence of Dean Winchester for the day. I didn't know what had gotten into me, just agreeing to let Ben Braeden into my house, then going to lunch and now… fishing.

Dean and I had gotten along well the day before, it was true, and I didn't usually get along well with new people. I liked to take my time, and observe, before getting involved. And my brother Michael always used to say that I lacked the ability to lie. This is not true. I know how to lie and I can keep my face very blank. I just don't think that lying is necessary. Lying doesn't help anything. 

I was hoping Ben wouldn't ask me if I was glad he was coming on the fishing trip because then I would have to decide whether to lie or not. I liked Ben. He was a very engaging youngster. But I had never met anyone like Dean before and I wanted to get to know him better. I selfishly wanted time with just him. I wanted to see what he would look like in the morning sun. I wondered if I could get him to laugh again, like he had yesterday. He had a beautiful laugh, a wondrous smile.

The doorbell rang then, interrupting my reverie. It was Dean, alone.

"Hey, Cas," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "Um. I know it's 5:00 in the morning and late notice, but Ben has a stomach ache."

"Ben should not be in a boat, then," I replied. I wasn't sure what he meant. Would we therefore not be doing anything? Was he expecting me to invite him inside? I could not see into his car, as it was not light enough, but I did not believe Ben had also come to tell me about his stomach ache.

"Yeah, he stayed home."

I just looked back at him. I couldn't tell what he wanted to hear, so I said nothing. My brother Gabriel used to tease me and say this habit made me look stand-offish, but what is the point of filling the air with meaningless noise?

"So…" he said. "I still have all the gear packed up in the car. Would you still want to go?"

Oh. Just the two of us. He shifted his feet and I wondered for a moment if he was just humoring me. My brother Raphael used to accuse me of not picking up on signals, especially signals that meant I was not wanted. Well, he left a long time ago, and I understood perfectly that he no longer wanted to be around me. But I could not tell with Dean.

"I… believe I would enjoy it," I said finally.

"Awesome. You realize, though, that it's fishing. Outside, wooden dock, dirty worms." He gestured to my suit. "Do you have any, uh, play clothes?"

Dean was wearing a somewhat ratty pair of jeans and a faded t-shirt, plus clunky boots. I was wearing a dark blue suit and white button-down shirt, plus dress shoes.

"Perhaps." I opened the door wide for him. "Please, come inside while I find some clothing."

He let out a low whistle at the foyer and wandered past me to stand in the entranceway to the Green Room. We called it that because it used to have lots of plants growing in it in my grandparents' day, but they were long since gone by the time I was born. Now it was cream-colored walls and artwork, and my mother's harp in one corner, but the name had stuck. I had never liked that room. 

I led him past it and up the stairs. My hands were a little clammy. I had not invited another person this far into my house since a storm two years ago had sent a tree branch through an upstairs window at the other end of the hall from my bedroom. I had passed an enjoyable few days discussing the finer points of In-N-Out burgers with the two workmen who repaired it. I do very much like talking with people, despite what my brothers thought. They just do not enjoy talking with me, usually.

Dean followed me right into my bedroom and looked around. His hands were shoved into his pockets and he rocked back on his heels as he craned his neck to see all he could of the walls. 

The mural was painted by one of my great-great-uncles, a man who, according to family legend, once walked from Pasadena to San Diego in search of a particular species of orchid. The orchids and the man died out before I was born, but the legend and the mural remain. Half of the room is dedicated to Dante and Beatrice in the Primum Mobile, the Ninth Sphere of Heaven, as they contemplate God and the angels. The other half of the room depicts Dante and Virgil in the Ninth Circle of Hell, Satan trapped in ice behind a wardrobe I placed there myself to hide me from his many weeping faces. Above the doorway to the bathroom is carved the words "All hope abandon, ye who enter in!" This caused my brother Nick much amusement when we were younger. He was about ten years older than me, and I recall being lifted onto his shoulders as a child so I might run my fingers over the carving and laboriously read out the words. Gabriel said the room used to belong to one of our great-great-aunties, a woman notorious for her bowel movements, hence the placement of the carving.

I crossed to my wardrobe and contemplated my choices. I had not worn jeans since soon after my brothers had all left, back when I still tried to maintain the gardens. An old pair was lying in the back corner, and I unbuckled my belt to change into them. A noise from behind me caused me to look over my shoulder. Dean had his back to me. His neck was red. Belatedly, I realized I should have left him downstairs. I put the jeans on as quickly as I could. They were a bit snug, but they fit. I had no t-shirts like Dean except for plain white undershirts. One of those would have to do.

"Is this acceptable?" I asked him.

He didn't say anything at first, just looked at me. I took the opportunity to stare back at him. He looked like the type of man who was comfortable in his own skin. I had always thought that to be a silly expression, but Dean moved with a surety and confidence, and he wasn't flashy. He was… comfortable. I typically felt uncomfortable, personally. Although not with Dean. It was as if he had siphoned off some of his comfort and offered it to me. He cleared his throat and asked me if I had a pair of sneakers. I looked back inside the wardrobe.

"I have the footwear I wore in high school," I announced. I pulled out a pair of formerly white high-tops. They were now stained with dirt and tar and the passage of time, but they should still fit. Dean grinned when he saw the shoes.

"Damn, Cas, those went out of style years ago. They've been gone so long, they came back in and are starting to work their way out again."

I looked at the shoes, then back at Dean.

"Does that mean I cannot wear them?" There sure were a lot of rules to this fishing business.

"Wear them, sure, go for it. I'm hardly one to talk when it comes to fashion shit. It's a little chilly this early, too, but I'm sure I have a flannel shirt or hoodie in the trunk you can borrow for when we first get there."

My heart began to pound. I would be wearing Dean's clothing. I decided that I would be 'cold' for the duration of the fishing trip.

It _was_ actually cold at the pond, but before I could regret leaving my trench coat behind, Dean was there, sliding soft, warm cotton over my shoulders. I thanked him and he squeezed my arms before releasing me.

"So… I take it you're a fishing virgin?" he asked in a jocular tone as he unloaded a tackle box, cooler, bucket and fishing poles from the trunk of his car. "Can't have that on my watch! Never fear, I'll show you the ropes."

"I have read a manual on how to fish," I informed him, and he snorted and thrust the bucket and one of the poles into my hands.

"Trust me, you can't learn this from a book. It's all about the experience." He led the way down a shallow embankment and out across a long dock. Two tattered folding chairs sat side-by-side at the end of the dock. There was not another living soul present.

We settled into the chairs, and Dean popped open the tackle box and pulled out a small container of writhing worms. I stared intently at how he hooked the worm and then selected my own. It wiggled in my fingers and tried to circle my finger. I could not kill it.

"I cannot kill this worm," I announced, and laid it very carefully on the dock. It inched slowly away. I could feel Dean's eyes on me and I met his gaze. He shrugged his shoulders.

"I've got some plastic lures. You planning to eat what we catch?"

He didn't sound angry with me, despite my freeing of the worm.

"I believe so," I said.

"Good." He attached a lure onto the end of my pole for me and handed it over before casting his line. I held my pole out in front of me. It hadn't looked difficult, but my first attempt landed on the dock, and Dean barked a laugh. My second try landed, somehow, beneath the dock. I frowned fiercely at the pole, but the third attempt was not any better.

"Here, here," Dean said, pushing himself up out of his chair and crouching next to me, still laughing. "It's all in the wrist." He put his arms around me and laid his hands over my own. I could smell him, toothpaste and coffee and cotton and something spicy and musky. I did not dare to lean into his touch, though I wanted nothing less. He drew the pole back in our combined grip and cast the line well out into the lake. "Not too shabby, huh?" he asked, smiling, and I turned in his arms to look at him. The sun appeared above the tops of the trees and bathed his face in light.

It was the most beautiful sight I had ever beheld.

### **DEAN** ###

I couldn't read him. Well, I'd been reading him for seven years. But in person, I couldn't tell if Cas was into me, or if he was just lacking in social skills. Like when he got changed in front of me? With most people, that would have been a flirtatious invitation. But Cas acted like I wasn’t even there, and it wasn't an act to begin with. Then, when I was teaching him how to fish, even though I had my hands on him he never reacted to the touch.

Although, there was the staring. Dude stared a lot, and that, combined with the lively conversation we'd had the day before, kept enticing me into putting my hands on him. He never rebuffed me, but he never walked into it, either. About halfway through the morning it occurred to me: were we becoming friends?

I didn't have a lot of friends. Growing up, there was Sam. That was about it. I was just a little busy helping my dad raise Sam after our mom died. He was always the one to get us other friends, like Ash and Victor, but they were more his friends than mine. Nowadays, I still had Sam, and I'd managed to add Bobby. Though he was also my boss. I just wasn't that good at making friends, especially when I really wanted to jump their bones. I was good at charming people, like I'd been doing the day before with Cas. But this was something else.

He was easy to talk to, all silent and intent, like he was interested and wanted to know more than what I showed on the surface. It was fucking unnerving, is what it was.

"Ben exhibits highly advanced thought processes for an eleven-year-old," he said, abruptly changing the subject after we'd been sitting there for about an hour and I'd been rambling about lures and fishing, and he'd been nodding along.

"What? Yeah, he's very smart. Not that I can take much credit for that."

He frowned. "Why not?"

I shifted around in my chair. They were shitty chairs; I should've brought our own.

"He lived with his mom up until a month ago, in Indiana." Cas didn't say anything, just stared at me. "Uh, she passed away."

"I am sorry for your loss, and Ben's," he said. God, he was still staring at me.

"Yeah, Lisa was… vibrant." _Vibrant?_ The hell? I sounded like an old lady lamenting the loss of her young neighbor. "Honestly, Cas, we didn't know each other that well." Great, now I sounded like a douche.

"But you had Ben," he said. He kept moving his pole up and down. There was no way he was going to catch a fish like that. I'd already caught two.

"Lisa didn't tell me he was mine," I muttered. "It was…" I didn't want to say 'one night stand' because that sounded so tacky, but that's what it was. "Uh, anyhow, I didn't see Ben, or Lisa again, until three years ago."

"She lied to you about Ben being your son." He said it flatly and his hands gripped the pole until his knuckles were white. He was a little scary like that, but at the same time I was a little flattered, that he could be indignant on my behalf.

"Yeah. She told me he wasn't my son." He didn't have to ask his next question. "I don't know why. I mean…" I sighed. I'd asked myself this _so many_ times. How could she hide him from me? Why would she do that? "We didn't really know each other," I repeated. "How was she to know how I'd react?"

"I know how you'd react. You offered to marry her, didn't you?"

It was my turn to stare at him. I totally _had_. I'd said Indiana or California, it didn't matter to me. We were a family. And she'd said that no, we weren't. But I could keep in touch if I wanted to.

Cas nodded, as if I'd spoken the words aloud.

"But in her will, she did not lie."

"No, she didn't lie there."

I couldn't be mad at a dead woman, and I couldn't be glad that she died and I got Ben. But it hurt, that she didn't think I was good enough to be Ben's dad, and it was only an accident that gave me the chance. Deep down, I _know_ I'm not good enough, but that doesn't stop me from trying. 

Cas suddenly started out of his chair with a loud, "Oh!" He had a real beast on the end of that line.

"Awesome, Cas!" I helped him reel it in. His face was transported with joy, his lips parted and eyes shining. And if we had been talking about anything other than my worst insecurities, I would have kissed him right then.

+++ **BEN** +++

Dad had an awesome time on his fishing trip with Castiel Novak, and I knew I had made the right choice. He even caught some fish, and Castiel Novak came to our house to eat them! He said I could call him Cas, too, just like Dad. He cleaned the fish like Sean and Dan in _Stonehenge Apocalypse_ , which was actually kind of gross. Raw fish stunk.

After lunch, we taught Cas how to play pool. This is a really cool thing about the house in California: instead of a dining table, we have a pool table! My dad's awesome at pool, because he's a scientist and pool is a game of physics. Cas wasn't so good at it. Dad had to keep correcting his stance and help him hold the cue stick. Uncle Sam kept giving me the thumb's up. I think he's confused about pool. Cas needed a _lot_ of help from Dad; Dad's hands were practically glued to Cas's waist.

Uncle Sam pulled me into the kitchen at one point for a 'Wing Man Conference.'

"So, Ben," he said. We were supposed to be getting root beers for everyone, but Uncle Sam had the fridge open and was looking at the top shelf, when the root beer bottles were clearly on the bottom shelf. "Good going with the fishing trip. You have any more ideas like that?"

"Um… we could go to the beach," I suggested. _I_ thought the beach would be fun. My dad kept saying he'd take me, but we really hadn't found the time yet.

"Yeah, that's good," Uncle Sam said. "Fewer clothes."

I made a face. There was being a Wing Man and then there was Ew. 

"The movies," I said hurriedly. People were always going to the movies on dates in… the movies. Maybe that was a, what's it called, marketing play? Ploy. Huh. But everyone kept their clothes on for it, and that was good enough for me.

Uncle Sam had finally spotted the root beer bottles.

"I think there's a Sergio Leone retrospective running all next week at the Chinese theater," he said. "Dean could go for something like that. Oh, and guess what I saw in the paper?" he asked, grinning broadly. "The LA Philharmonic is going to do a show of Metallica's music. Classical Metallical! That'd be good, right?"

I looked at him in horror. "Uncle Sam, that's _unholy_! Dad would definitely hate that."

"What would I definitely hate? The two of you drinking all the root beers while Cas and I die of thirst?" Dad asked, strolling into the kitchen with Cas right behind him. Dad took a bottle out of Uncle Sam's hands and popped off the cap right on the counter and handed it back to Cas. Uncle Sam hates it when he does stuff like that. 'Defacing the property,' he calls it.

"Dad, Uncle Sam wanted you to go to Classical Metallical!" I told him, and Uncle Sam shot me a dirty look.

"Sacrilege, Sammy!" Dad shouted, and grabbed another bottle despite Uncle Sam raising them really high. He popped the cap and gave it to me.

"I wasn't aware the music of Metallica lent itself well to the classical genre," Cas said. He took a sip of his root beer and then peered into the bottle, his brow all furrowed and stuff. He probably thought it tasted weird. The only sodas in the house were special kinds Uncle Sam bought – brands I'd never heard of and none made with high fructose corn syrup, which I know all about thanks to Uncle Sam.

"It doesn't," Dad said, and succeeded in getting one more bottle for himself. He clinked bottles with me to celebrate.

"Fine," Uncle Sam snapped, but he wasn't really mad. "Let's go to Redondo Beach, instead."

And that's how the four of us found ourselves on Redondo Beach the next day. We were joined by Uncle Sam's best friend, Jo. Jo is the most beautiful woman in the world. I want to marry her some day. I don't remember what the others did. I helped Jo make a sand castle. That's kind of babyish to do, but our sand castle was more like a work of architecture than playing in the sand. We took pictures, and Jo said she was going to send some in to a magazine, they were so good. She even bought me an ice cream. Uncle Sam had a popsicle. Dad and Cas got chocolate-covered bananas and made a big mess.

It was when we were gathering our stuff to go home that I saw it. Cas tripped on his flip-flops (he'd borrowed them from my dad, because it turned out, Cas didn't own any!) and my dad reached out to keep him from face-planting. Then he touched Cas on the back, just above the top of his orange swim trunks, and Cas turned around, and I think they were thinking about kissing. Right out in public where people could see. I'd have to tell Uncle Sam we should arrange for them to go on dates just the two of them, because no one wants to see their dad kiss. That's something like… like taxes: you know they exist and grownups do them, but it's not pleasant for you to experience.

Dad looked up, and he saw me.

"Uh, Cas had some chocolate on his chin, I was just going to help…" he said. That was totally a lie. Although Cas still had some chocolate smeared on his cheek.

"Yeah, okay," I said. I hoped we weren't going to Talk about it later.

We didn't, thank goodness. We talked about baseball, and music, and even comic books. Cas didn't know much about baseball or music, or comic books either, really, but he asked good questions. And I got to tell the great author Castiel Novak stuff he didn't already know!

Everything was going just great. Dad was happy, Cas was happy, and Uncle Sam and I were happy that they were happy. It didn't make up for my mom, but it made me miss her less.

~~~ **SAM** ~~~

They went to the Sergio Leone retrospective without us. That was fine by me. Honestly, you see one Sergio Leone, you've seen them all. Ben and I stayed home and watched a movie. I told him he could pick, and he proved himself to be his father's son and chose _Die Hard_. I am so damn sick of that movie.

Dean didn't get back until after midnight. I know, because I waited up for him. He made a beeline for the fridge, and didn't notice me until he walked back into the living room and almost dropped his beer at the sight of me.

"Nice evening?" I asked.

"What the fuck, Sammy? Sitting here in the dark?" He took a short swallow of beer. "Kinda creepy, don't you think?"

"The better to hear you scream like a little girl," I replied. "And you didn't answer my question."

He rolled his eyes and a little line appeared between his brows. I could feel my own climbing. He'd been rebuffed. The Great Dean Winchester. That line was his tell.

"Dean. Something's telling me you actually _watched_ all those movies."

He shrugged and settled into our dilapidated La-Z-Boy.

"Cas had never seen them. We're not, you know…" His voice trailed off.

"Dating?" I supplied. "Knocking boots?"

"Jesus, Sammy."

"Affianced? Intended?" I continued.

"Your dorkiness is fouling the air."

I grinned at him. It was hard to tell in the dark, but he looked a little down.

"Dude, it seriously wasn't a date?" I asked.

"Cas," he started, fiddling with the label on his bottle of beer, "takes things kind of literally. I said, let's watch movies – so he watched movies. And then we talked about them."

My mouth fell open.

"Oh, my God, you're becoming _friends_. Castiel Novak is your _friend_!"

"Shut up. I shouldn't have said anything to you." He pushed himself up out of the La-Z-Boy.

"Come on, Dean, wait!" I protested. "There's nothing wrong with being friends! You could use more friends." Oh, shit. The filter between my brain and my mouth was broken!

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean? You think I don't have any friends?"

"Of course you do!"

"You think I can't be friends with a guy like Cas, is that it?"

"No! I think you'd make awesome friends!" Geez, Dean could be so touchy sometimes. I'm never like that. "I just thought you wanted something, well, more from him. And at the beach, Ben said–"

Dean winced. "I knew Ben saw that," he mumbled.

"So… what are you going to do, then?" I asked.

"I'm going to meet Cas for lunch. And talk about dystopian movies. Just like a good friend would."

And he did. Over the next couple of weeks, my lothario of a brother kept it in his pants and actually got to know Cas. They did really weird shit together, like research on survival skills for Cas's book. Even Dean has an inner geek, ha! 

Ben was excited about it all, and not just because of Cas being his favorite author. He took his Wing Man duties very seriously and gave Dean dating advice that I knew he must have found online. Maybe I should have stopped it, or tried to explain to Ben that Dean referred to his dates as 'hanging out' which did not make them boyfriend-boyfriend. But I didn't. And then he suggested his idea of the Holy Grail in dating (when one boyfriend cooks a meal for the other), and Dean went for it.

I honestly didn't think anything could go wrong.

*** **CASTIEL** ***

Dean told me he'd pick me up at 6:30. I was ready at 4:00. My heart was racing at a ridiculous pace, so I tried just sitting quietly in the front drawing room.

It was a poor choice.

My older brothers had had a fantastic argument there about fifteen years ago, a few years after our parents died. I remember sitting quietly in the corner as Nick, Michael, Gabriel and Raphael systematically tore apart our family ties. When it was over, I knew that no force in heaven or hell would ever gather us in the same room again.

I miss them. It is a constant ache, like a hollow in your chest that once was filled with the assurance of love, or a silence in your head, when once you heard constant laughter. I have tried reconnecting with my cousins Uriel and Anna, but it is difficult to be around them. They are just reminders of who they are not.

I was so caught up in my foolish memories of the past that I did not hear the doorbell; indeed, I did not come back to the present until Dean was kneeling in front of me, a look of concern on his face. He was so close I could see individual freckles across his nose and cheeks, and highlights of emerald, amber and bronze in his eyes. We both moved forward at the same time.

His lips tasted like chocolate milk, maybe Ben's? Then he slid his tongue between my lips and I tasted heat and spice and wetness, if wetness were to have a taste. I think he was saying my name, and I tasted that, too. It was crisp and sweet, like an apple. He was pressed up against me, straddling my hips in my mother's refurbished antique rocking chair that I was never allowed to sit on as a child. He was so strong, it surprised me. The firmness of his chest was like an unyielding wall and I just wanted it to crush me. To absorb me and accept me. 

He touched my face then, and I shamed myself by crying a little. I think he noticed, but decided not to say anything. It had just been so long since someone had touched me with their eyes open. We rutted against each other, rocking up and down on the chair, our breathing and the noises of copulation drowning out the squeak of the chair. He pushed our pants aside, holding us close together, rubbing and squeezing, and I just hung on to his shoulders and pressed my mouth to his neck, feeling him swallow, feeling the beating of his heart as blood rushed throughout his body.

Release followed soon after, for me and for him. He collapsed against me and I welcomed the weight. I welcomed the weight of all of him, his physical body, his emotional baggage, his family. Everything.

I think I fell in love with him the moment I saw him.

"I love you."

### **DEAN** ###

Well. That was fucking awkward.

After we fucked on a rocking chair, and _Cas told me he loved me_ , I had to take Cas home with me to the barbeque Sam and Ben had been preparing all day. I had really been looking forward to it. It was just, Jesus, _love_ , and the way he looked at me. Like I had slotted into place in his life, filling some sort of emptiness. We'd only known each other a few weeks. Which was a chickenshit response on my part, I _know_.

I didn't say anything right away. What could I possibly say? He stood really close to me when I took his hand and led him to one of his bathrooms to clean us up. He was giving me that look, the look I had wanted to get from him the first time I saw him, and I wanted to ask him if he knew how this was going to go. When you want something so bad, and then you get it? You're always thinking, well, when's the other shoe going to drop? When's he going to realize I'm a remote hog, I can be grumpy as hell, I never share my pie? When's he going to figure it out that I'm a selfish bastard and he should have nothing to do with me? When's he going to leave me?

He took my hand after he locked the front door behind us, and I let him. Maybe I shouldn't have. He looked utterly delicious, his hair mussed and his lips swollen. He was humming. Fucking _humming_.

The ride to my house was silent, except for that humming. I think it may have been a hymn.

Sam could smell the sex the moment we came in, I could tell. He just took Cas's coat, the oversized trench that even I could see was a fashion faux pas, and gave me The Look behind Cas's back. I went out to check on the grill instead.

We were making burgers which, it turned out, were Cas's favorites. He told Ben, in his gravelly, sexy voice, that he once ate only burgers for a month when he was younger, and I could see the shape of the Winchester menu for the next few weeks in the widening of Ben's eyes. Awesome.

Dinner conversation wasn't stilted, thanks to Sam. I don't think I did much more than grunt the whole time. As dinner wrapped up, Ben looked at Sam and I distinctly saw Sam shake his head. Ben just scowled at him, and invited Cas on a family outing to the Griffith Observatory during the upcoming weekend. Cas, of course, readily accepted.

Then it was time to drive him back to his mansion. And that's when the shit really hit the fan.

"We have leftover hamburger, Cas! Do you want to take some with you? My dad makes the best hamburgers, doesn't he?" Ben was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet. "I want to eat one for breakfast!"

"I will eat one for breakfast with you, Ben," Cas replied, and I sprayed root beer across the table. Unfortunately for Sam, right in his face. I could see the wheels turning in Ben's head, and I had to cut him off at the pass.

"Wrap those up, Ben, I need to take Mr. Novak home now."

"But Dad–"

"Can it. I have to be at work early tomorrow. Hop to it."

Ben gave me this look like I was fucking Benedict Arnold or Bill Buckner. I could hear him sullenly bag up a couple of hamburgers for Cas while Sam washed his face and I hustled Cas towards the hall closet and his coat.

"Dean, did I–" Cas started.

"Not here," I hissed at him. Ben came shuffling out to the hall, hamburgers in hand, and I snatched them from him. "Thanks, champ. Help Sam clean up, and I'll be back soon."

"Goody," he said flatly.

Sam joined us and shook Cas's hand.

"Thanks for coming, Castiel. We'll see you on Saturday for the Observatory," he said. I guess he was more pissed at me for the root beer than I thought. Confirmed when he gave me the ultimate bitchface as Cas said goodbye to Ben.

Cas sat quietly next to me in the car for the first ten minutes of the ride. Gathering his thoughts, I supposed.

"I didn't mean to presume," he said finally.

"Yeah, well, that's what it sounded like, and in front of my kid," I snarled. I hoped we were going to get into a fight. A big, huge, messy fight so I could forget the way his eyes glistened when I touched him or the way I murmured his name like a fucking lovesick fool when I kissed him.

"Ben is not the problem here," he said.

"Leave Ben the fuck out of this," I shot back, conveniently forgetting that I was the one who dragged him into it in the first place. Cas just looked at me. He had a stare that could drop you at a thousand yards. I got antsier and antsier until he spoke. And then I wished he hadn't said anything.

"I don't understand. You made love to me this afternoon, but now you wish to have nothing to do with me. Is that correct?"

Oh, fuck, make love? Who says shit like that? Cas, that's who, the dude who tells people he loves them.

"We fucked, Cas. That's what that was. A mutual release of tension." I'd always been a smooth liar.

"I see." His voice was so fucking cold, my nuts shriveled up to raisins. "Let me out here."

"What? Dude, we're three miles from your house!"

"And I don't wish to be in your presence anymore. Let me out."

I slammed on the brakes. His fingers fumbled with the door handle, and I remembered how they had felt in my hand, just a few hours earlier. I was such an asshole. I let him get out, and I let myself drive away.

*** **CASTIEL** ***

I had a meeting with my agent the next day. I was in need of a distraction. My family was prone to alcoholism, and left to my own devices, I would have found a liquor store and drunk it. As it was, I was in a rather kvetchy mood when I took a cab to Venice Beach and the office of one Chuck Shurley.

Chuck is under the impression that I don't know he writes for a pornography periodical under a pseudonym. 'Carver Edlund' – I think it is a bad name for pornography and is more properly fitting for a horror compilation. On the day of our meeting, a young lady of indiscriminate morals was up in his office, giving him advice of a sexual nature. It did not improve my mood. Especially as I was quite sure that Chuck was dallying with my typist. 

"Get out," I told the young lady, perhaps a trifle rudely. She left very quickly, not even bothering to pull up her G-string, and hurried back downstairs to the peep show. Chuck sat up too fast and tipped over his chair, winding up on his buttocks on the floor, spitting up a few errant hairs from the young lady's nether regions.

I hope Becky uses protection.

"Castiel!" Chuck squeaked. "To what do I owe this honor?"

"We had an appointment," I informed him. I debated sitting in one of his chairs, but I had my suspicions about the stains on those chairs, so I settled for leaning against his side table.

"Holy shit, is today Thursday?" he asked, tripping over his chair again in his anxiety. Chuck is a very anxious fellow, and I happen to know his pornography assignments are due on Thursdays.

"Of course it is Thursday," I said, "or else I would not be here."

He paused in his frantic scrambling for his appointment book, or a bottle, and looked at me.

"Um, dude?" he asked. I waited, but there was nothing more forthcoming. I do not understand this using 'dude' as a question, or an exclamation, or a warning… it means too many things.

"What is it, Chuck?" I had to ask finally.

"Are – is everything okay?" He sounded like he actually meant it. But Dean was not something I could talk about with Chuck.

"No. But I would prefer to discuss my manuscript," I said.

"Yeah, okay," he agreed. "I'm behind on it anyway since Becky dumped me."

That was news to me.

"My typist, Becky Rosen, has dumped you?" I asked.

"Well, yeah, why did you think I was, you know, with one of the girls from downstairs?" He turned a little red. "I'm not a complete cad."

"I suppose you are not, Chuck," I mused. "I had assumed she was helping you in your research to write your pornography."

He fell out of his chair again. He really was a very jumpy fellow. Dude.

"You know about that?"

"Of course."

"Shit."

"I think your pseudonym is a trifle problematic."

"This is surreal."

"Carver Edlund sounds like an axe murderer."

Chuck cleared his throat and ran a hand through his hair, which just messed it up even more. "Let's not talk about me. We really don't have to do that. What's… what's going on post-apocalypse? Are Sean and Dan subsisting on cockroaches or something?"

"Nut paste. Though I haven't been inspired to do much writing these past few days."

"Oh? Yeah?" Chuck was nodding his head, and I got the feeling he hadn't been paying attention, but then he surprised me. "What's going on in your life that you don't feel like writing, huh?"

I didn't have many friends. I didn't talk to my family. And I realized, as I stood there in Chuck's tiny, foul-smelling office, that I didn't want to wind up like him, drowning my heartache in cheap thrills. I needed my own advice of a sexual nature.

"What do you do when someone you're in love with tells you you didn't mean anything?" My question shocked even myself. Chuck just gaped at me.

"Uhhhhhh… I fall into a bottle?"

"I was hoping for something a bit more productive."

"Yeah, yeah, sure," Chuck mumbled. "Um. Did you – you in this hypothetical situation, of course – well, did you believe them? That you didn't mean anything, I mean?"

I frowned, running over the events of the past few days in my head.

"He paid close attention to my discourse, he invited me on outings and to his house, he was very tender when we made love–" Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Chuck flailing in his seat. "But then he acted as if I had presumed affection that did not exist. I made him stop the car and let me out."

"So, so this is a dude?" Chuck questioned. "You – you know that dudes are only after one thing, right?"

"I am not completely naïve," I snapped. "I am familiar with the sex drive."

"Okay! Okay, that's good. I mean, not that I think of you – with the sex – anyhow." He cleared his throat again. "It sounds to me like you got used. It sucks, but it happens. Happens to me a lot."

"Dean wouldn't use someone," I informed him. "He has a beautiful soul."

"Oh! Oh, um, okay?" He opened his desk drawer and fumbled around for a bottle. "So, you think there's a different explanation?"

"Couldn't there be one?" I asked. Despite what Dean had said, I refused to think ill of him. "I told him I loved him. Wouldn't that make him happy?"

I would have been very pleased if any of my brothers had ever told me they loved me. But Chuck was staring at me like I was a creature from my third book, _Dark Side of the Moon_.

"Well, that's not how," he stammered. "I mean, uh, I guess it's possible he was pushing you away because he's afraid of commitment."

That sounded good. It could make sense. But how does one overcome that fear? I asked Chuck that same question. Chuck snorted.

"Dude, don't ask _me_. That's a question for Oprah."

Oprah Winfrey was a television personality. There was no way I could ask her. Chuck drank from his bottle and avoided my gaze.

I would need to talk to Dean again. That appeared to be the only solution, though it was one I considered with a great deal of trepidation.

~~~ **SAM** ~~~

My brother's an idiot. It's a proven fact. I don't know how the hell he managed to screw things up with Cas, but he did. He needed to fix things, and fast, because now there was Ben to consider.

Ben got up the morning after the barbeque and started chattering about going to the Observatory with Cas, and Cas this and Cas that and Dean just snapped. I'd never seen him yell at Ben before, and from the look on Ben's face, he sure as hell hadn't been expecting it.

" _Cas_ will not be joining us on Saturday, and that's final!" Dean roared.

"Why not?" Ben yelled back.

"Never mind, why not! I'm the dad, and I said so!"

I winced. It was Dean's standby whenever he was embarrassed in an argument, only I had always got "Because I'm the big brother, and I said so."

"That's not an excuse, and you know it," Ben said sullenly. "You're just mad because you did something stupid, and now Cas doesn't want to be your boyfriend anymore."

"We're not talking about this anymore," Dean announced, and slammed the door as he left.

Ben knows that Dean's bisexual. I explained it to him soon after he got to California. Kids need to know this stuff! They're very curious about sex. I told Ben that Dean was attracted to both men and women. Not that he needed to have sex with both at the same time! My explanation got a little garbled after that, and Dean took over. The point is, both Ben and I had seen the potential for Dean to have a real relationship with Castiel Novak, and both of us wanted to make it happen. But Dean was messing with our plans.

I let it go for one day. One day was all I could handle of the Winchester Sulk, and I was getting it from both sides. On the second day, after Dean had hauled his sulky ass to work, I pulled Ben aside and told him I was taking him to my favorite place in the LA area. It's actually not my favorite place; it was my girlfriend Jess's favorite place. She died about five years ago, in a horrible fire just like my mom. Ben thought I didn't know how he felt, as I was a baby when my mother died, but I knew more about loss than most people. 

We went to Huntington Gardens in Pasadena. Jess made me go to a tea there with her once, then we went wandering through the gardens. There're desert gardens, and rose gardens, and bonsai, and many, many more. There's one specific bench by a little pond, underneath a willow tree – I was going to propose to Jess there. I led Ben right to it.

"So," I started. I'd been thinking of how to broach the subject with him for the past day, but he surprised me.

"Why's he gotta do that?" he burst out. 

"Dean? I mean, your dad?"

"Yeah." He kicked at a tuft of grass and stared at the pond, though I doubt he saw anything. "Mr. Castiel Novak is his favorite author. _Of all time._ And he was so happy to meet him and they've been getting along so well, and I know he _like_ -likes him. Why'd he have to be mean?"

It was a good question. One that I couldn't really answer. At least not satisfactorily.

"Well, Ben," I began. "Dean's a little emotionally stunted."

He gave me a sideways glance. "What's that even supposed to mean, anyhow?" he asked.

"Hmmmm. Okay, let me try to explain. Dean had to, well he had to grow up real fast, see? And he didn't have much of a childhood." I was getting into dangerous territory here. Ben's eyebrows were coming together. "So he acts a little immature now, because he never could then."

"So because Grandma died, Dad's mean to guys he likes? Am I gonna grow up to be like that?"

"What? Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no. You have a stable influence, and Dean's a lot better father than – never mind. Plus, you have me!"

I wasn't really selling him on this idea. And dragging my dead father's name through the mud, too. Awesome. But the man wasn't at all demonstrative with his feelings, it's true. And Dean was always sharing stuff with Ben and building him up and shit. He's a much better dad; even as a four-year-old, he was a great dad.

"But my mom's dead, too."

It was the first time he had willingly mentioned Lisa to me. His eyes were a little watery. I had to swallow around a lump in my throat.

"I'm sorry, kiddo. You know she loved you, right? For eleven years, you were her number one. And I believe in Heaven. She's looking out for you even now. She made sure you got with your dad, didn't she? And he's really the best dad you could have."

I pulled a Kleenex out of my pocket and split it. We both needed to blow our noses.

"Thanks, Uncle Sam," he mumbled. He gave me his used half of the Kleenex back when he was done.

Yeah. He's a Winchester, all right.

+++ **BEN** +++

Okay, Uncle Sam's pretty cool, except for the whole going-to-a-garden-on-purpose thing. After we left the fancy garden place, we decided that we would have to be the ones to go visit Cas. I knew my dad would never ask him for a second chance. We'd have to do it for him.

I was a little nervous to ring Cas's doorbell again, but you got to have confidence in these situations. I saw it on an old episode of "The Suite Life of Zack and Cody."

He looked real grumpy when he answered the door, and I thought he might close it in our faces, which would have been uncool since _we_ hadn't done anything wrong. But then he let us inside. I was thirsty, but he didn't ask if we wanted lemonade or anything. Cas wasn't the type of person to offer lemonade.

I got the ball rolling because I could tell that Uncle Sam was going to say something sensitive and caring, and then we'd be there all day, when all I really wanted to know was, "Do you want to be boyfriend and boyfriend with my dad?"

Uncle Sam had a coughing fit, but Cas tilted his head as if considering the question seriously.

"I don't believe my feelings are of any import," he said finally. "As your father has no intention of being my boyfriend."

"But what if he stopped being a jerk and told you he liked you?" I _knew_ Dad liked him, and not just because he was the famous author Castiel Novak.

"Um, what Ben means is," Uncle Sam interrupted me, "ah, Dean can be a bit prickly, at first, but if you're willing to be patient with him," he glanced down at me, "well, you have our support."

" _We_ like you. Not like boyfriend-boyfriend, but like Dad's boyfriend." I thought I should make that very clear, because I didn't want Cas to date Uncle Sam. Especially since Uncle Sam had a drippy crush on the art teacher, according to Dad.

"Thank you," Cas said. "I will consider your words."

And that was the best we were going to get. In movies, the friends of the hero always talk about stuff the crush has done for the hero, to try to show him that the crush really does like him, but no way was I going to do that! For starters, Dad would be super embarrassed if I told Cas how he grinned really big whenever he talked about him, and _I_ would be super embarrassed to talk about that time I almost saw them kiss. So instead we talked about how to start a fire with just two sticks (for Cas's next book). None of us had ever done it before. 

Dad stuck his head in my room that night when I was getting ready for bed. Uncle Sam and I had taken a solemn oath to not tell him about our trip to see Cas, and I still really didn't want to talk to Dad. I flopped onto my bed and opened up _Stonehenge Apocalypse_ yet again.

"Hey, champ," he said. "May I come in?"

I flipped a page. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. Uncle Sam told me once that Dad used more hair product than him, and I could believe it then, as his hair stood up in little spikes all over his head. My hair does that, too, but without gel and stuff.

"Look, I'm sorry you're upset–"

"You should be apologizing to _Cas_." Crap, I had meant to keep giving him the Silent Treatment.

"Ben, you know sometimes things don't work out between two adults–"

"That's bullshit!" I sat up on my bed and glared at him. "You just don't ever want to try!"

"Really? I'm getting psychoanalyzed by my own son now?"

"You should just tell him that you like him." I scowled at him and he scowled right back. His freckles really stood out when he was mad, and I bet mine did, too.

"Oh, thanks, Dear Abby, I'm sure that will be enough."

"It should be!" I yelled at him.

"Well, it wasn't enough for your mom!" he yelled back at me. I felt like he had slapped me.

"What do you mean?" I whispered. He was already retreating.

"Look, Ben, I didn't–"

"Tell me. Come on, please, Dad."

He let out a big puff of air, and I knew he wasn't angry anymore. Just sad. I scooted over so he could sit next to me on my bed, the bed he'd bought for me when he brought me back here. We got all new furniture and then I decorated the room the same exact way my room had looked in Indiana.

"I told your mom I'd like to stay in Cicero with the two of you, or bring you both out to California, when I met you three years ago."

I could have been living with Dad for the past three years? Talking about music and going fishing and working on engines?

"Why didn't you?"

He put his arm around me.

"Because liking someone doesn't mean you'll stay forever. Please don't blame your mom, Ben, but she was smart enough to know that she couldn't be with me forever. It takes more than that for it to work out."

I got a case of the sniffles, and he let me blow my nose on his sleeve and gave me a big hug.

"I'm sorry, buddy. I'm not any good at getting people to stay."

### **DEAN** ###

I was elbow-deep in the guts of this new engine we were trying out when Bobby stuck his head around the corner and told me I had a visitor. That wasn't all that unusual, Sam came by a lot, and Ben had come to see me a few times on his own. But my visitor wasn't either of them, of course. It was Cas.

He still looked pissed. And incredibly fuckable. But I wasn't thinking about that.

"What are you doing here?" Not my most gracious or witty of opening volleys, I'll admit.

"You create futuristic cars. I write novels about the future. I want to see the cars. You even invited me," he said calmly. Only one little line between his brows betrayed that he was mad at me. Otherwise, you'd think he was car shopping or something, the way he stood there, hands dangling loosely at his sides and his eyes roaming over the lab. Over everything except me.

"Dude. There aren't any cars in your future. Most everything technology-wise went kaput. Dystopia, remember?" His calmness was beginning to irritate me. He gave a put-upon sigh and shook his head slightly, like I was being deliberately obtuse. That didn't help matters.

"Dean. Just because it is a dystopian view of the future, it does not mean the survivors will not at least _try_ to create a mode of transportation."

"Fine. Have it your way." I waved my arm at the engine parts and my whiteboards filled with messy sketches. "Look around. Tell me if you can't figure anything out. I'd hate to have an anachronism in one of your little stories."

I had scored a direct hit, but instead of the thought filling me with glee, I felt like the world's biggest asshole. God, he looked – God, I just wanted to take it back. He'd never look at me like I wanted him to, not anymore. He moved closer to me then, and his gravelly voice got even gruffer.

"I thought you at least respected my writing, but I see now that it was wrong of me to have faith in you." He squared his shoulders. "Please tell your brother and son that I tried. Goodbye, Dean." He turned away from me.

"What do you mean, tell Sam and Ben you tried? Have you been talking about me behind my back?" It was so much easier to get pissed at them than to react to Cas telling me he had faith in me. Well. _Had_ being the operative word. I grabbed his bicep, and he whirled to face me.

Shit. If looks could kill, I'd have been scorched earth. I glared right back at him. Fuck, they had no right to gossip about me!

"Talking to your face achieves nothing," he enunciated carefully, strangling his anger. "Now let go of me. We've wasted enough of each other's time."

"That how you feel? I'm a waste now, Cas? Didn't seem that way earlier."

All of his anger seemed to drain out of him as he tilted his head to look at me. We were standing so damn close, I bet he could count my freckles. I could count each individual eyelash.

"I don't understand," he said in a low growl. "You have a family that loves you. Truly loves you. But I think you really do believe you're a waste."

"Don't get all Dr. Phil on my ass." He really needed to shut up. People just didn't talk like that.

"I have no idea who that is."

"A presumptuous bastard!" I snarled at him.

His eyes darkened again with anger and he got right up in my face.

"You listen to me, Dean Winchester," he said, voice like steel. "You do not get to decide how I see you. You are beautiful." He forced me back, step by step, until I could feel a workbench against my knees. "You are warm, and loyal, and good." Oh, God, he thought he meant it. I looked over his shoulder and focused on my tools spread out on the counter against the far wall. 

"I'm going to mess this up, Cas. You can't – it'd be better if you left now."

"I am not leaving," he said forcefully. 

"I'll make you leave," I said in my most threatening tone of voice and he barked a short, mirthless laugh. "What if I ask for something you're not willing to give?" _What if I ask for you to never leave me? What if I ask you to stay forever?_

"There is nothing you could ask for that I would not want to give you. The difference is that _I_ have decided of my own free will. You don't make my choices, Dean. I say you are worth fighting for, so I will stay here and fight for you."

_Stay, stay, stay._ He was right up in my face then and I could feel the heat of his body through our clothes, but it was nothing compared to the heat and conviction in his gaze. I'd had dozens of lovers over the years, but no one had ever looked at me like that before. It was intoxicating and freeing and turning me on, and in that moment, I decided to believe him.

There was barely an inch of space between our faces, and I closed that space easily. I ran my hands around his waist and up under his shirt and he managed to move even closer to me, I have no idea how. He pulled his face back, just enough for me to see his eyes, and I was floored at the understanding in them. I wouldn't have to make some big declaration or get on my knees and beg him to stay. He could read it in the press of my palms to his skin, it was written by my tongue and lips along his neck and jaw. And he would answer in kind. His tongue was halfway down my throat when a loud noise startled us.

Shit, it was Bobby.

"When I said someone was here to see you, Dean, I can't say I meant for you to start making out like horny teenagers."

"Uh, yeah, sorry about that, Bobby." Cas was giving him this look like Bobby was the one at fault, and I almost laughed. "You know, it's practically 5:00–" It was 3:00. "–so Cas and I are going to take off. I'll catch you tomorrow."

He snorted and his moustache twitched, but he stood aside, and even clapped me on the back as we, rather hurriedly, made our getaway. Best. Boss. Ever.

We didn't make it out of the building before I had to push Cas into a supply closet and kiss him again. I could feel him against me and no way were we going to make it all the way to his house. It was the _responsible_ thing to do, to go down on him amongst the mops and jugs of cleaning supplies. And I don't shirk my responsibilities! Especially when they're staring at me with the widest blue eyes imaginable and gasping my name. My knees could handle the cement floor for that, and the heavy weight of him in my mouth, the taste that made me think of the sea (holy shit, I was romanticizing a fucking blow job; I was gone, gone, gone), and that moment, right after he came, when he relied on me to catch him. His breathing was harsh and loud in the little closet, and he'd finally closed his eyes, but just for a minute. He gave me his hand and pulled me up (my knees fucking creaked, damn I was getting old) and he kissed me, sucked on my neck and fumbled at my belt buckle. As chivalry's not dead, I helped, and then finally his hand was on me. I was way too close to the edge to appreciate finesse, which was good, as Cas didn't seem interested in finesse, just in sucking my neck as hard as he could and letting me fuck his fist. I didn't last long.

He smiled at me, there in the gray light of the supply closet, hair a mess and pants partly down with bottles of Mrs. Meyer's Cleaning Day products on shelves behind his head, and something just shifted. That's not to say that I thought, "Oh, yeah, Dean, you'll never fuck this up and everything will be peachy! Ben'll have two dads, we'll have a big groom-n-groom wedding and adopt kids from every continent and Sam will get us a dog and name it some dumbass fantasy name like Frodo or Merlin." But I did think that, maybe, I loved him back.

*** **CASTIEL** ***

Dean drove us back to my house, keeping his hand on my knee. I liked it when he touched me. I'd been so long without touch that I think I had forgotten that very human joy that comes with the heat of contact. I held his hand as I brought him inside, up the stairs again to my bedroom.

Then I was presented with a dilemma. I wanted to make love to him, but I also wanted him to touch me absolutely everywhere. I wanted to look at him, every square inch, and tell him how beautiful each piece of him was. But what to do first?

"What are you thinking?" Dean asked me, pulling me against his body. His lips were very close to my jaw and he started nuzzling at me.

"I want to look at you and tell you how beautiful you are," I informed him. His lips stilled. "I want to be completely naked and feel you against my skin. I want to make love to you so you know how I feel about you."

He pulled back from me and stared at me. The sound of his swallow was very loud in the still room.

"Damn, Cas," he whispered finally. "You really just say it like it is."

"There's no point in saying it any other way. Why should I pretend my feelings for you are any less than they are?" I stepped closer to him again. I preferred to be able to feel his body heat.

"Okay," he said. His pupils were dilated and his breath came faster. "Okay. Clothes."

He started unbuttoning my shirt as I unbuckled his belt. It was a little awkward, the shedding of these final layers between us, and I wished I could blink my eyes and just make them disappear. Finally, though, he was completely naked, as was I, and I could push him back onto the bed and look at him.

"You are very well-proportioned," I told him, and he began to laugh. I stretched out beside him and touched his face, ran my hand down his neck and let it rest on his chest, the vibrations from his laughter traveling up my own arm. "You have a lot of muscle." He laughed harder, and I smiled. "I especially like here," I felt his right thigh, "where your muscles are stretched, long and hard." The bed shook with the force of his laughter, and I began to laugh, too.

He reached out and rolled on top of me.

"Don't ever change, Cas. Okay?" he murmured, laughter still in his voice. All I could do was nod, as every nerve ending in my body lit up with the feel of his skin against my own. His skin was rough in places, smooth and firm in others, coarse with hair along his legs and a thin sheen of sweat over everything. When he moved over me, I could feel electric sparks race through my body. I had to kiss him, and then we were sharing the same breath. I could not recall ever feeling so connected to another human being.

"Dean, I want–" I tried to say against his lips, and he nodded, as if he knew exactly what I wanted, and rolled off me and the bed to pad, naked, to his discarded jacket and pat down the pockets. I stared at the line of his back, and he looked over his shoulder at me.

"I don't usually – but, it's weird, I kind of want you to," he said.

"I have no idea what you mean," I said. He rolled his eyes and fished something out of his pocket.

"I want you to fuck me."

"You mean make love to you," I corrected.

"Have it your way," he said, but he was still smiling as he approached the bed.

"I intend to," I told him and gripped him by the waist and pulled him back down. He was solid muscle and his skin practically glowed, and little laugh lines appeared around his eyes as I wrestled with him to get the lube and condom out of his hand. He was, without a doubt, the most beautiful creature I had ever seen, and he wanted me. I pushed him back against the pillows and carefully slid a cold, wet finger inside him. I watched his face as I found his prostate and stroked it with one, then two fingers.

His eyes were wide and noises were escaping from his throat. "Cas-Cas-Cas," he stuttered. It was the most powerful I had ever felt in my life and I moved closer, to kiss him and suck on his tongue as his body shook beneath me.

"Cas!" he gasped into my mouth. "How are you – God!"

"Those were just my fingers," I said, and he laughed, a kind of breathless shaking of his shoulders that continued as I gently arranged him on his side and stretched out behind him. It changed into a low moan when I pushed inside him, and at first, I thought maybe I had hurt him. But I hadn't.

We lay on our sides, facing Paradise and with our backs to Hell. I read a lot of fiction, every different genre, and I felt like a character in one of Pamela Barnes's romance novels – the kind that overcomes adversity and has wild sex in improbable places at the end. It felt good to be one of those characters for a change. I could feel Dean along every square inch of my body, even the parts that weren't actually touching him. I leaned my head on his shoulder, pressed our cheeks together, and looked down the length of his body. He was close, so close, and I had put him there.

"Cas," he moaned. "Cas." I thrust into him and saw stars. I couldn't stop touching him, couldn't stop staring. The sex act is messy and looks ridiculous, but Dean is an exception. He was completely beautiful, even spent and shaking and mumbling incoherent words as I followed him over the edge.

We didn't talk, afterwards. It would have been unnecessary. We just moved across the bed, until the sheets felt cool against our heated skin and then, even though it was only just 5:00, he held me to his chest and we slept. 

I woke up a few hours later with a burning desire to write. I crawled out of his arms, grabbed a notebook from my bedside table and started a new chapter in what Chuck would eventually name _Dystopia Is for Lovers_ :

> "Ashes to ashes and dust to dust," Dan said, upending his boot and watching pebbles, dirt and one dead scorpion fall out. "What I wouldn't give for a different taste in the air."

> His companion stood up and stamped his feet, settling his boots on. He'd found a live spider in them that morning, and both brothers had watched in silence as it spun away.

> "Next thing we know, you'll be complaining about the décor," Sean said, and waved his arm at their surroundings.

> Dan grimaced and scrubbed his hands through his hair. He was getting shaggy again, and sand and dirt rained down in a soft cloud from his head to the ground. His eyes stared dully at the twisted trees and slabs of rock behind them, before he turned his back and looked towards the city.

> Barbed wire and bombed-out buildings stretched ragged steel fingers towards the gray sky. Dan glanced at his older brother, checking his resolve. Sean's feet were firmly planted, his shoulders a straight line. They were going into that city no matter what. Dan sighed.

> "I'm ready," he muttered, and Sean shouldered his small pack and led the way, picking a path through potholes and rubble until they reached a large hole in the fence. It was a tight fit, but they managed. They kept their eyes peeled. This was the best source for clean water within ten square miles, and clean water was the cause of hundreds of skirmishes since the Apocalypse.

> Dan bumped into Sean as he stopped abruptly in front of him. _Shit_. He was armed with a sharpened branch, and gripped it tight as Sean edged slowly forward.

> "Just one," Sean breathed to him, and he nodded, scanning the ruins to either side of their path. He finally got a glimpse of the man Sean had seen.

> The man was smaller than either brother, perhaps a little older. Head bowed, he walked unseeing, alone, a dangerous way to be. He stopped suddenly and lifted his chin in their direction.

> "You want this water, I'm not going to stop you," he said calmly. "Please, go around me."

> Dan and Sean exchanged a glance.

> "That's mighty kind of you, friend," Sean said finally. "But how do we know–"

> "If it's a trap?" The man laughed, the noise tinny and hollow, unnatural in the destroyed city. "I'm completely alone. There's no one to trap you."

> Sean frowned. "It's not safe for you to be out here alone," he said, and Dan's head whipped around in surprise. _Surely he could not be suggesting–?_ "What's your name, friend?"

> "Why do you call me friend when I know you not?" the man asked, tilting his head and peering intently at them.

> "Sean," Sean said. "And my brother, Dan." He clapped his hand on Dan's shoulder. Dan looked at the man, taking in his bedraggled cuffs, stubble, and stained clothing. "There. We're no longer strangers to you." It should be a joint decision between him and his brother, but Dan knew he'd already lost when the man looked up at Sean from beneath dark lashes, a ghost of a smile playing across his lips.

> "Jimmy," he said.

> Sean stepped forward and held out his hand. Jimmy shook it hesitantly.

> Just then a long, high-pitched howl reached them, followed by several smaller yipping howls. Sean's hand closed convulsively around Jimmy's. Dan nodded to himself.

> "We'll have better luck warding them off as a team," he said. "Nice to meet you, Jimmy. Now, you know anyplace high and defensible around here?"

> "Follow me," Jimmy whispered, nodding.

> Storm clouds gathered as the three ran, together, through the desolate city, searching for higher ground.

Epilogue – Six Months Later

+++ **BEN** +++

I'm helping my dad build a car. A completely refurbished 1967 Chevy Impala, to be exact. It's gonna look awesome! We're putting it together in Mr. Singer's garage, as it's supposed to be a surprise, and since Cas lives with us now, he'd see if we were working on it at home. I had thought we'd move into Cas's mansion, instead, but Dad had said no, there were too many ghosts there and besides, he didn't want me switching school districts in the middle of the year. I thought it'd be cool to live with ghosts, but Uncle Sam said they weren't _that_ kind of ghost. So we closed up the mansion in Pasadena (Cas says that one of his brothers might come forward and claim it now, but he's not holding his breath) and now we all live in our house in Torrance. And it's Cas's birthday in just a couple of weeks, and what else would my dad make for him but the best car in the world?

The Impala is sleek and dark and gorgeous, and when it's done, it will have a little bit of all us Winchester-Braedens in it to give to Cas – like a 'welcome to the family' gift. Dad and I are installing the engine, and Uncle Sam got a friend of his (someone he knows from RenFaire, and Dad said that he wished Sam hadn't told him that part) to provide leather for the seats. I can't wait to go places in the Impala. Cas will take me to the Observatory, and Uncle Sam to Jo's house for their game (Cas is a wizard now), and Dad to this little pond where they'll go fishing.

I used to think that life would always suck after my mom died. But it turns out there's still life after the end of the world, just like in Cas's book. And I'm glad.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my beta, the bodacious kel_reiley. Originally written for tasty_boots in the deancastiel Secret Angels IV Fic Exchange. Originally posted in the fall of 2010.


End file.
